This review contains spoilers for the film You Can See Everything.
When the new documentary You Can See Everything premiered, viewers were immediately plunged into a cinematic experience that felt akin to waking up from a multi-layered dream within a dream. Co-directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, the nearly three-hour feature focuses on the disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes during the final weeks before she reported to federal prison. To call the film winding and twisting is an understatement; it is a dizzying descent into a world where the truth drifts further out of reach the more questions are asked.
Describing the project to someone unfamiliar with its expansive context is a daunting task. It requires navigating Fielder’s Dadaist, boundaryless approach to documentary subjects alongside Holmes’s deeply hypnotic affect. Whether her demeanor is the result of highly effective gaslighting or a blinding, self-deluded earnestness remains an open question—one that lingers long after the credits roll.
When you take two notoriously unreliable narrators—and add a third in Holmes’s partner, Billy Evans, whose on-camera persona shifts dramatically from a protective, naive tech bro to an unscrupulous grifter—and shake them up in a jar, reality begins to warp. Watching the film feels much like staring at a Magic Eye image, desperately crossing your eyes to make out a hidden three-dimensional subject that never quite comes into clear focus, leaving you with a lingering anxiety that your perception might stay stuck that way.
While the broader discourse surrounding the film has touched on myriad angles of corporate fraud, public redemption, and personal accountability, one of the most revealing sequences has nothing to do with high-stakes biotechnology and everything to do with a simple kitchen chore: making eggs.
For those familiar with the hallmarks of Fielder’s unique brand of television and filmmaking, a hyperfixation on seemingly mundane details is a classic signature. Fielder frequently zooms in on trivial interactions that eventually return to completely upend audience expectations. In You Can See Everything, this pattern manifests in an exchange between Holmes and Evans as they attempt to prepare breakfast. At first glance, the notion that a viewer can glean deep psychological insights from watching someone scramble eggs sounds absurd. Yet, as the scene unfolds, it becomes a micro-study in power dynamics.
During the first half of the documentary, Fielder is fully embedded in the rental home where Holmes and Evans have invited the filmmakers to document the twilight of Holmes’s freedom. The mere fact that the couple agreed to this arrangement remains incomprehensible to anyone familiar with Fielder’s history of psychological discomfort and subversion. Within this environment, the narrative takes a surprisingly sympathetic turn toward Holmes. She appears intent on convincing the crew—and Fielder specifically—that she is not a Machiavellian mastermind who knowingly defrauded investors and patients, but rather a sweet, misunderstood victim of circumstance.
At times, aspects of this curated vulnerability feel startlingly convincing. Viewers are invited into ostensibly less guarded moments, including the breakfast preparation scene. As Fielder interviews her, Holmes limply and rather unenthusiastically beats a bowl of eggs with a fork. The camera lingers on her feeble whisking technique, capturing a distinct lack of culinary vigor. Then, after a few awkward seconds, another set of hands enters the frame: those of Billy Evans. Without uttering a word, Evans takes the bowl and fork directly out of Holmes’s hands and begins whipping the mixture with considerably greater force and purpose.
Backseat driving in the kitchen is hardly an uncommon phenomenon among domestic partners, though it frequently serves as a fast track to minor arguments. Earlier in the documentary, Evans insists to Fielder that he and Holmes “never fight,” while Holmes remains equally emphatic that she has never lied in her life. Both statements reinforce their status as deeply unreliable narrators. What is considerably less common—and widely regarded as rude or aggressive—is physically snatching an item out of a partner’s hands mid-task to take over the chore entirely.
When Fielder points this out and asks Evans why he felt the need to intervene, Holmes steps in to explain that Evans simply dislikes the way she mixes the eggs and believes he can do it better. It is a tiny interaction, yet it is remarkably revealing. Evans feels entirely comfortable seizing control of an activity Holmes is performing without even asking, seemingly oblivious to how his domineering behavior might read on camera. Holmes, on the other hand, appears entirely accustomed to the intrusion, offering an immediate justification rather than an objection. While beating eggs is certainly not one of Holmes’s strong suits—a task that typically requires vigorous aeration to achieve fluffy results—her passive acceptance speaks volumes about their internal dynamic.
Yet, considering who is on screen, viewers are forced to ask a darker question: Could this be an instance of weaponized incompetence? Is it possible that Holmes, wishing to avoid the manual labor of beating the eggs, intentionally performed the task poorly so that Evans would step in and take over? Is she genuinely being controlled, or is she expertly manipulating someone else into doing her work? Alternatively, does this reflect her famously eccentric way of thinking, suggesting she truly does not understand the standard, effective way to beat an egg?
Throughout the film’s interviews, Holmes paints the Theranos years as a period of manipulation under her former boyfriend and business partner, Sunny Balwani. She maintains that her ultimate intentions were humanitarian, regardless of the devastating fallout for investors and patients who received faulty blood test results. Whether she genuinely believes this revisionist history or is simply deploying her formidable salesmanship remains one of the film’s central mysteries. It also highlights a recurring theme in her narrative: the extent to which her romantic partnerships lead her to absorb the blame for the actions of worse men.
These questions reverberate with renewed force in the second half of the documentary. Following Holmes’s departure for prison, the film exposes deeply unsettling details about Evans. It is revealed that he holds power of attorney over Holmes and has been utilizing her X account to publish bizarre, profanity-laced remarks that starkly contrast with her actual manner of speaking. Suddenly, the seemingly harmless egg-whisking scene takes on a much darker hue, functioning as an early indicator that Evans is far more controlling than the protective partner persona he initially projected.
His ostensible vigilance toward Holmes is difficult to reconcile with his willingness to license her image for billboards promoting another entrepreneur’s obsession with Theranos, or his apparent openness to the possibility that her AI-generated likeness could be exploited for unauthorized content. Even as Evans emerges as an increasingly unsavory figure, Holmes herself remains an enigma. Does she know what he is doing? Does she approve of it? Is he exploiting her precarious legal and social circumstances, or are they engaged in a shared strategy—whether for reputation, monetary gain, or something else entirely? The documentary offers conflicting evidence for multiple interpretations, leaving open the chilling possibility that even if Holmes is being dominated, she may be entirely content with that arrangement.
The true brilliance of Fielder and Oppenheim’s documentary lies in its optical-illusion-like layers of truth. Despite close-ups that capture agonizing microexpressions, a massive chasm exists between what Holmes and Evans say, what they actually do, and what they plan to execute next, such as the reported launch of a Theranos successor project called Haemanthus. Furthermore, Fielder’s own well-documented history as a provocateur—a faux-earnest agent of discomfort who can maintain a stone-cold poker face through any absurd scenario—adds another layer of artifice to the proceedings.
Watching the film, audiences are constantly forced to question Fielder’s sincerity as well. Several moments throughout the runtime prompt speculation about whether a palpable, albeit bizarre, tension exists between Fielder and Holmes, and whether Fielder might lean into it. If he did, determining whether that connection was genuine, a piece of performance art, or a seamless blend of both proves nearly impossible.
Ultimately, the most revealing moments in You Can See Everything are those that feel entirely off-script for everyone involved: a fleeting micro-expression, an odd word choice within an emphatic declaration, or a silent exchange over a bowl of scrambled eggs. The subjects have willingly invited cameras into their lives, yet the rare instances where they seem to forget they are being watched provide the closest glimpses into their reality. That reality remains perpetually murky, perfectly mirroring the deliberate irony of the film’s title.
You Can See Everything elevates Nathan Fielder’s reputation far beyond a master of cringe comedy, establishing him as a genuinely visionary filmmaker. The project serves as a fateful showcase for his unique gifts, illuminating the bottomless strangeness and infinite complexity of human interaction. It reminds viewers that even when dealing with monumental narratives of corporate malfeasance and public infamy, it is the smallest, most mundane details that often reveal the most profound truths. In a documentary that promises you can see everything, the ultimate takeaway is that the burden of observation rests entirely on the audience—and even then, the truth will always shift depending on the light in which it is viewed.
